Allegations about The Great Leap Forward have been used to destroy the reputation of Chariman Mao and and the Maoist movement. Until the early 1980s, even those who were not Maoist were willing to accept that his revolution had achieved huge advances in terms of the health and welfare of the citizens of China. From the early 1980s, articles began appearing in the West accusing Mao Zedong and the political party he led of being responsible for the deaths of millions of his citizens during The Great Leap Forward. These figures have been repeated in virtually all discussions about the Maoist era. This is despite the fact that the evidence for the so-called genocide during The Great Leap Forward is uncertain to say the least.
The allegations against Mao are part of an attempt to argue that communism was as bad or worse than the Nazi regime. Opponents of communist ideology want to close off the only serious alternative to the capitalist system. Despite this, people around the world still follow the thinking of Mao. The Nepalese Maoist party, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), is one of the most prominent examples of the continuing influence of his ideas, they refer to the start of their revolutionary struggle as The Great Leap Forward. Maoist thought and anti-revisionism remains a focus for radicalism and those interested in an alternative politics. Maoist ideas are still studied by those involved in national liberation struggle. Even controversies over the Cultural Revolution (official title-Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution) seem to have re-opened.
Analysis of the evidence that Mao 'killed' 30 million Chinese people in the Great Leap Forward. This evidence is shown to have emerged during a campaign against Maoism and the Maoist legacy by his successor Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s. The demographic evidence is of very questionable origin. Other evidence presented by Western authors about massive deaths in this period, such as Jung Chang and Jasper Becker, lacks sufficient authentication. This article also contains a discussion of the work of Roderick MacFarquhar. Evidence exists of big achievements in economic and social terms during the Maoist era in China.
Stalin and Hitler: A False Comparison.
Opponents of communism often try to discredit Mao by drawing attention to his mainly positive view of Stalin. Why should this view discredit Mao? Stalin is routinely alleged to have killed as many people as Hitler during his collectivization drive and the purges of the 1930s. A simple examination of population figures accepted by western commentators shows that this is not the case. Stalin's regime created the world's first socialist economic system and defeated fascism. Like Mao, the negative features of his rule have been greatly exaggerated. The successes have been ignored.
Critics of communism have been assisted in their task by the conflation of the communism of Stalin and Mao with the capitalist societies that were created in Russia and the Eastern bloc after Stalin's death. Thus the failures of this particular variant of the capitalist system are ascribed to Marxist- Leninism and the so-called 'revolutions' of 1989 are portrayed as the last chapter of a mistaken ideology.
The actual record of communism is far more positive than mainstream thinking would suggest. In a time when there seems no alternative to rampant Western imperialism and the poverty and violence it creates, it may be time to give the history of communism a more sympathetic treatment. The material here is meant as a modest contribution to this much needed re- evaluation.
Press Release-
Bizarre
Exchange
Between Oliver Kamm And Pro-Mao Author Joseph Ball.
Please note: this is a historical website only. I am not able to enter into controversies to do with modern Maoism, such as the split between the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and the Maoist Internationalist Movement or debates about People's War in the modern world.
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